Interview with Scott Atlas, target of the Stanford "Dear Colleagues" letter
The interview is from June, about 50 minutes, part of the "Uncommon Knowledge" series. His high level points:
(1) Whereas covid has cost 800,000 lost years of life, lockdown costs 700,000 lost years of life per month, totaling 1.5 million lost years at the time of the interview. This number is based on applying existing models for life year cost of unemployment, and the life years lost from delayed or unperformed medical procedures. He claims this is using a conservative estimate for the cost of lockdown.
(2) He gave a few specific examples about unperformed medical procedures during the lockdown: 40% of people experiencing a stroke did not call an ambulance, 40-50% of people experiencing a heart attack did not call an ambulance, around 70% of cancer screenings during lockdown were not performed.
(3) He cited a number from Children's Hospital of Michigan showing a 35% increase in child abuse cases at the hospital.
(4) He is very critical of closure of K-12 schools, both because of the direct effect (children are not being educated) and also indirect effects (eg. child abuse is most often noticed at schools, social learning for children)
(5) He is critical of policy that is exclusively science based, says policymakers need to weigh tradeoffs and make decisions based on science but also economics, social impact and balance costs and benefits. He says the policy makers for lockdown did not consider the costs of the lockdown, and were focused only on defeating coronavirus at all costs.
(6) On the whole, he calls the lockdown one of the biggest public policy mistakes in "modern American history".